Don Richard Riso


Don Richard Riso was an American teacher of the Enneagram of Personality who wrote and co-wrote a number of books on the subject.

Early life and education

Riso grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana. He studied English and philosophy and received a M.A. from Stanford University. Around 1962, he joined the Society of Jesus of the New Orleans Province, but later left the order without being ordained.

Enneagram work

In the early 1970s, some members of the Jesuit order came in contact with the Enneagram material and it began to be taught in Jesuit and other Roman Catholic institutions in North America. In 1974, as a Jesuit seminarian in Toronto, Canada, Riso first learned of the Jesuit teaching on the Enneagram which, he has said, "consisted of nine one-page impressionistic sketches of the personality types" and fascinated him. In the following year, 1975, he left the order and began developing the brief type sketches to more detailed descriptions.
Riso developed a number of original ideas regarding understanding the Enneagram, such as nine "levels of development" from "liberated" or "healthy" to "pathologically unhealthy".
In 1987, Riso published his 12 years of Enneagram thinking in his first book, Personality Types: Using the Enneagram for Self-Discovery. This work showed the influence of Carl Gustav Jung and also of Karen Horney. Three years later he published Understanding the Enneagram.
In 1991, Russ Hudson joined Riso, originally to create a questionnaire for indicating people's Enneagram types. The result was the Riso–Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator. Several versions have since been developed, the present complete version consisting of 144 pairs of forced-choice statements.
In 1995, Riso and Hudson founded the Enneagram Institute in New York City. The institute has since moved to Stone Ridge, New York, where it offers workshops and trainings as well as publishing materials pertaining to the Enneagram. It is represented by the Enneagram Institute Network in more than 15 countries. Hudson participated in revising the book Personality Types for the second edition, which came out in 1996.
Riso considered himself to be Enneagram type Four with a Three wing.

Death

Riso died on August 30, 2012, from metastasized pancreatic cancer.